Letters to David
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Gray
Goodenowwrites
from Miami, Florida, on Monday, July 15, 2002 about the
Kucera collection of photos

Hitler's
regiment, or not?

IN RESPECT of the two group photographs of German
soldiers, and whether they show Adolf Hitler, I
offer the following:

Hitler volunteered for service in the
Bavarian Army in August 1914. He was promoted to Corporal
in November 1914. It
was his only promotion. In photo #3
(right), the men are wearing
M1895 army tunics, except that two, including the
possible "Hitler," are also wearing their M1907 gray
"mantels" or overcoats. The button configuration on the
sleeves of the visible M1895 tunics does not foreclose
that the men are Bavarian, but it does not confirm it.
For example, the sleeve button configurations for Baden
and Wurttemburg look nearly identical in BW photos. On
the two men wearing "mantels", the blocks on the collars
are likely dark red rectangles indicating infantry. While
M1895 tunics predate the M1910, M1910/15 and M1915
reworkings of the WW1 "German" uniform, Charles
Woolley in his masterful two-volume, over 600-page,
tome on Imperial Army uniforms, points out on page 61 of
volume two that during the war, M1895 uniforms were often
used for training. He also reprints photos from 1914, and
one as late as 1917, showing men in M1895 uniforms. These
facts lend credence that the soldier could be Hitler as a
Bavarian infantryman wearing a M1895 uniform at the
completion of his training in the fall of 1914.

More compelling to my mind, are two contrary
observations:

except for the 2 men in the "mantels", the other
men are almost certainly officers with their white
belts, brimmed caps, white gloves and - most
importantly - white shoulder boards; and

nothing supports a claim that "the tassels"
indicate the soldier is a German WW1 corporal.
According to Woolley, corporal or "gefreiter" was
indicated by "a small button or disc bearing the state
arms on both sides of the collar". No one in any of
these group shots appears to be displaying any rank
Hitler is known to have held. Every time I have seen
either in photos or collections such a plaited cord
from the shoulder to a button, as this "Hitler" wears,
it has been termed a marksman's prize. You indicate
that the full photo is not displayed, so I allow that
the other parts of the photos may clarify or nullify
what I propose.

IN my opinion, the man in question does not
sport the mustache that Hitler
is shown in other photos to have worn in this period. I
believe that photo #4 (right) shows the man without a
mustache, and that photo #4 only suggests the Hitler
toothbrush mustache owing to the illumination used for
the photo. We know from Heinrich Hoffman's photo
in August 1914 in front of the Feldherrnhalle [in
Munich] that Hitler then wore a broad mustache. In
the known WW1 photos of Hitler, he wears the same broad
mustache (and M1910 and M1915 uniforms). He also has the
same broad mustache in the photo for his Bavarian gun
permit dated November 26, 1921. The toothbrush came the
following year.

Using the "Trevor Roper" historical inquiry method to
review the Doctor's affidavit
(incidentally, why in English?), I query where and when
Hitler could give Kucera, his "academic friend", a
painting that also included hidden snapshots
of Hitler's family pre-1903 (when Hitler's father
Alois died) behind a frame that was put on it to
hide the name of the creator of the painting when Hitler
came to power in 1933? Confused? I'd be very curious
about the back of the painting, the back frame mat, and
the photos' backs. Photos from this period, if left on
nearly all typical paper of the time, tend to "bleed",
that is they leave an impression - nearly a negative of
themselves - on paper left firmly placed against them.
That's why many old books with photographs, not prints or
lithographs, had that flimsy white sheet just after the
photo, between it and the next page. Do these appear?
It's been seventy odd years, and some of the photos are
as big as the painting. It's also strange that Kucera did
not sell the work in NS time, when he could have made
some money, but gave it away later.